


Lists

by penny_dreadful



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, Angst, M/M, Racism, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penny_dreadful/pseuds/penny_dreadful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Tony Stark gets thrown back in time to 1941.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Okay," says Tony. "Okay. Okay. Think, Stark."

Things he knows: One, he's in an alley, in probably New York, judging by the smell. Two, he has no service on his cell, which means it can't possibly be New York, or anywhere else in the galaxy because Tony modified this phone himself and it has signal fucking everywhere. Three, he's woefully underdressed for the weather because approximately thirty seconds ago he'd been sitting in his climate-controlled bedroom in sunny California in May and now he's standing in an alleyway in Not-New-York in a t-shirt and it's snowing.

He flips open his phone again, turns it off, and then turns it back on, to no avail. He's about to actually make the effort to go out onto the street and look at signs when someone ducks into his alley and flattens himself against the stone wall, eyes trained on the street.

"Hey," says Tony.

The boy lets out a surprised yelp and whirls on him. "O-oh," he says after a minute of staring at Tony, and relaxes a little. "Hello. Um. Sorry."

Tony shrugs. "It's a free country." He examines the boy curiously. He's about Tony's age, maybe a little younger - 19, 20 - though like a full head shorter and about half his body mass. His blonde hair is sticking up in all directions, and he's breathing hard. He keeps casting nervous glances behind him. "Who're you running from?" asks Tony.

Instead of saying anything, the boy grabs Tony by the wrist and pulls him against the wall, throwing an arm across his chest to make him flatten against it. Three boys, all larger than Tony and this newcomer put together, lumber by the entrance of the alley. The one leading has a mean-looking bat and a split lip. They're all, for some reason, dressed like bullies in a cartoon - white wife-beaters, suspenders, pork-pie hats.

Everything is weird.

Tony whistles, when they're safely away. "That answers that. What'd you do to piss those guys off?"

"I punched one of them in the mouth," the boy says, "and I'm not running away -" he lets Tony go and steps out into the street. "I'm a distraction. HEY!" 

Before Tony can do anything but gape, the boy cups his hands around his mouth and yells after the armed, dangerous bullies, "HEY! OVER HERE, GREASEBALL!"

He waits a moment, and then gives Tony a quick smile and tears off back down the street the way he'd come.

Tony has a split second to decide: he could stay here in this random alley with no way of getting anywhere else, probably to have those assholes find him and hit him with the baseball bat in lieu of that crazy motherfucker, or b) he could stick to said crazy motherfucker like glue by dint of him being the only one Tony knows even a little bit in this weird-ass city.

He shakes himself, and starts sprinting after the boy.

A block and a half later, he catches up. In the space of that time, he has figured out some things: One, he's definitely in New York. Two, it is definitely not his New York. Three, he is really, really not dressed for sprinting through the December snow in the wind-tunnel streets of New York City.

Four, when he's panicked and cold and far from home, he defaults to thinking in lists.

"Theory one," he says aloud to the boy he's now running alongside, who's puffing and panting already. "Alternate universe."

"What?" The boy asks, staring at him with startled eyes. "Why're you following me?"

Tony squints at him. He's not going to last much longer, running like he is. He really, really doesn't want to look behind them, but he's pretty damn sure the thugs are gaining. "Theory two," he says, scanning the streets to figure out where he is. "Aliens." That's a favorite, although not exactly likely.

He sees a landmark he recognizes. So long as the city isn't too different, there should be...

He reaches over and grabs the boy's arm. "Come on." He pulls him sideways into an alley, ignoring the boy's protests. He's right - there's a fire escape, a old one where the bottom stair still slides down easily. It's much less rusty than he remembers, and the dumpster he used to climb on the edge of in order to get up isn't here, but a fire escape is a simple machine, he's Tony fucking Stark, youngest genius playboy in the world.

Youngest genius playboy millionaire, as of last month, but he's not thinking about that part, he's pulling his new friend up a fire escape instead, and then they're crouching on the roof of the building where Tony used to hide from the world and staring down at the street below.

"Thanks," says his friend.

"No problem," Tony says easily, "uh - what's your name?"

"Steve Rogers," says the kid, and sticks out a hand.

Tony laughs and takes it. "No relation?"

The kid blinks. "To who? What?"

"To-" To Captain America, duh, to the guy Tony's dad never shut up about, never stopped looking for, to the guy held up as twin examples to which Tony always fell short - both this is what a man should be and look what I accomplished by the time I was twenty-five. "Nevermind," Tony says, and feels his face slip from anything genuine to the charming mask that was becoming more comfortable than his own skin. "Just someone my dad knew, it's not important. I'm Tony."

Steve nods, and then smiles, a little cautiously. "Nice to meet you."

"You too." He pulls out his phone again. "Damn it, I thought higher ground might help."

Steve's staring at his phone. "What's that?"

Tony looks at him, looks at his phone, and then turns and stares at the city, at the model of the cars, at the storefronts and the pedestrians and the gentle fall of snow dusting the streetlights. "Right," he says, "theory three: time travel."

"Sorry, what?" Steve asks, looking at Tony like he's the crazy one, which is honestly pretty fair, from his point of view. 

Tony just shrugs and kind of shakes his head, wrapping his arms around himself in a vain attempt to preserve any of his body heat. 

"You, um, never answered my question," Steve said after a minute of surprisingly comfortable silence. "Why did you follow me?"

Because I'm going to use you as an anchor point in time, Tony thinks, but says instead, "because you were interesting. You never answered my question, either."

Steve raises his eyebrows. "Sorry?"

"What were you distracting those assholes from?"

Steve, incredibly, goes a little pink. "They were...badgering a lady."

Tony stared at him. "So you punched one of them in the face? You know that they would've caught up to you eventually, right?"

Steve shrugged, the tiniest bit of steel in his spine. "I can take it better than she could."

Tony shakes his head. Trust him to find the most idealistic, goody-two-shoes moron in Old New York. "What year is it, anyway?"

Steve blinks at him. "1941."

"Oh. Oh." Okay. Right. Not related to Steve Rogers because he is, in fact, Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers, flawless heroic suicidal epitome-of-manhood Steve Rogers. Although, by the looks of it, pre Stark-brand epitomizing.

He's half angry and half in awe and half laughing, and he knows that's three halves and he feels like three halves of a self, uncontained, somehow. "Fuck me," he mutters.

If Steve went pink before, he's blood-red now. "E-excuse me?"

"Sorry," Tony says, and feels his own cheeks heat, ridiculously, how long has it been since he blushed? he's just reflecting Steve's - Captain America's embarrassment back at him. "It's so goddamn cold," he snarls, because it is and because the silence between them has grown tense in a way he's not sure he wants to look at too much, and because he's been spouting non-sequitur after non-sequitur this whole conversation, so why should he stop now?

He sits down at the edge of the building and swings his feet over the edge, staring down as the cars that his brain tries over and over again to classify as antique slowly get covered over with a masking of snow. It's comforting, the wall between him and where he is, but not comforting enough.

Something drapes over him, heavy and warm, and he looks up to see Steve in his shirt-sleeves, settling his coat over Tony's shoulders and not looking him in the eye. He sits next to Tony on the edge, but Tony bets his whole fucking fortune that he doesn't have the same urge to just tip forward and fall.

He's got a destiny to fulfill, after all.

He wants to hate him. He really, really does. He wants to look at him and think you stole all the pride my father should have had in me. But he doesn't. Instead he looks at him, at the snowflakes in his eyelashes, and says, "My father died a month ago today."

"I'm sorry," says Steve. 

"Me too," says Tony, and means it, probably for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve shifts from foot to foot, trying to be subtle with his shivers, but it's fully dark now and his shirt is nearly soaked through with snow. The strange boy—Tony, he'd said his name was—is still staring down at the street. He doesn't look like someone who ever cries, but he looks like maybe he should. "Um," says Steve, not wanting to interrupt, but he can feel his toes going numb. He calculates how much money Bucky's mom has this week and how much it would tax her to set another plate at dinner. He could probably make some extra pocket change shoveling snow for the neighbors tomorrow. From the looks of the storm they were gonna need it. "Do, do you have a place to stay? Tonight?" He's betting not; the kid's skinny as heck and all his clothes look to be two sizes too small, his pants skintight around his legs, although they look surprisingly new. Add that to the recently dead father and Steve's thinking orphanage at best, street at worst.

Tony looked up, surprised, as if he'd forgotten Steve was there. He shook himself. "Ah, me? I'll be fine, don't worry." He stood, starting to slip off Steve's coat and give it back to him. "I've imposed enough."

Steve shakes his head when Tony offers him the coat. Kid's not even wearing a proper shirt. "It's not exactly my rooftop space you're taking up," he reminds. "C'mon."

Tony gnaws at his lip, his thoughts flickering fast behind his eyes. "You're sure?"

Steve smiles at him. "I'm sure. My friend's mom, she's." He feels his smile slip but tries gamely to hold it in place. "She's good at taking in strays."

"Your friend—?" Tony asks, and then it clicks, and his voice gets careful. "Oh," he says. "We've got something in common, then."

Steve shrugs a shoulder and doesn't think about his mother's face. "This way," he says instead, and leads Tony away.

Bucky greets them at the door. "Steve, what the hell?" he starts when he sees Steve's coatlessness and soaked shirt. "You look like a drowned rat!" He sees Tony. "Hello, who's this?"

"Tony," says Tony at the same time Steve does, and then throws Steve a wink. Steve coughs a little and shrugs at Bucky, who's watching him curiously. "I found him in the street. Didn't want him to freeze to death."

"'Course," says Bucky, amused. "C'mon in, boys."

"Tony," says Steve as they stamp their way into Bucky's front hall, "This is Bucky, my best friend."

Bucky slings an arm around his shoulder. "Best friend, brother-in-arms, protector from bullies..." He grins at Tony.

Tony doesn't grin back, just raises a bizarrely elegant eyebrow, an expression more fitting on the face of the Queen of Sheba than a kid off the streets. "I heard he did some protecting himself today," he says, and Steve feels a surge of embarrassment and gratitude towards him. 

"You didn't," Bucky says, a warning in his voice, and then he's pulling Steve around to face him, hands gentle on his shoulders, his eyes searching Steve's face. "You're okay? I don't see any bruises—you've can't keep getting into fights without me—"

"Bucky—" Steve protests. "It's fine, I got away clean, they were bothering a girl, I couldn't just let something happen."

"You got away?" Bucky asks, frowning. "But with the cold, your lungs..."

"Tony helped," Steve mutters, resenting him a little. He's only worried, and Steve knows that, but every since his growth spurt (and Steve's lack of growth spurt) the gap between their physical prowess has yawned wide, and Bucky never hesitates to remind Steve of how defenseless he is. Not that he shouldn't, it's just. Well.

"What's this I hear about fights?" Bucky's mom calls from the other room. 

"Nothing," Steve and Bucky shout back in unison, and Steve's glad for the chance to duck out of Bucky's grip and go kiss her on the cheek. "Need any help, Mrs. Barnes?"

"Not from you, you little charmer," she says warmly, shooing him away, and then puts her hands on her hips. "Bucky! Come help me set the table! I'm afraid the platterware won't match, what with the new face added in," she apologizes to Tony, who's slipped off Steve's coat and wandered into the kitchen, staring around himself like he's never seen anything like it.

"Please, don't worry about it," Tony says, picking up the radio and examining it with apparent wonder. He flashes a quick, charming grin at her and Steve thinks maybe he might get more girls even than Bucky at a dance. "Thank you so much for opening up your lovely home to me."

Mrs Barnes looks flustered and a little bit suspicious, like she thinks maybe Tony's being sarcastic. "Well, it's not all that," she says, and goes back to cooking.

Tony's still examining the radio, running quick fingers over it like he wants nothing more than to take it apart and see how it ticks. "You like machines?" Steve asks, because there's not much else to say.

"Hmm?" says Tony, distracted. "Oh, uh, yeah. You could say machines are some of my best friends." He laughs a little to himself, then coughs. "Sorry, that. Sounds a little sad when I say it like that. I don't mean. Radios, I." He squints. "I...build things?"

"Oh, maybe you could fix that, then," Bucky interjects from where he's laying out forks and knives. "Mom says it's been cutting out during storms lately."

Tony perks up, looking the most alive he has since Steve found him in the alleyway. "Could I?" he asks Mrs. Barnes, as if she's the one doing him a favor.

"I doubt there's anything you can do," she says, frowning at Bucky. "It's just the weather interfering with the radio towers, I'm sure. But you're welcome to try. There are some tools in the hall closet."

"Oh man, thank you." Tony looks eagerly around like he's going to take the thing apart then and there. Steve runs interference. "I'll show you after dinner," he says. "Let's get you out of your wet clothes." Tony smirks a little, and Steve doesn't think about why. There's something about the kid that's...that's like a dame in the movies, something soft and dark and uncurling in his smile. If it were aimed at a girl Steve would call it  _seductive_. He doesn't know what it's called when it's aimed at him.

He leads Tony to his room and tries to find something of his that'll fit. He finds a shirt easily enough, and worries at his lip as Tony strips off his undershirt (which seems to be his only shirt). Tony's not much broader than he is—except for his arms, which are surprisingly muscled; Steve wonders if he works in an automobile shop—but he is nearly a head taller, and so all of Steve's pants would be comically short. The ones he's wearing, which really  _should_ be comical already but somehow aren't, are scandalously low-cut. Without the undershirt in the way, Steve can see them shift over his hipbones. There's something about it that separates it from every other time Steve's seen his friends change, cuts it off from locker-room boyhood and closes it off in a new kind of box, one Steve doesn't have a label for. He feels like maybe he should turn away or close his eyes or  _something_ , but then Tony catches him looking and there's a flash of surprise and then that tiny curl of a smile again. Steve's sure he'll say something about it, pull some words for whatever's happening out of the well of bizarre knowledge he's got behind his eyes, but he just says, "You should change, too. Don't want to catch a cold." _  
_

"Right," Steve says quickly, because he's just been standing there like a dolt, and undoes the buttons on his shirt.

He ends up just having Tony keep his own pants, partially because he doesn't know how on earth Tony would even get them off, which means that Tony can't really tuck in his shirt without it looking like a woman's blouse. He just shrugs at Steve and lets them hang. 

"Where are you from, Tony?" Mrs. Barnes asks him over dinner.

There's a split-second pause, and then Tony says brightly, "California, originally, but I live in the city now." He smiles a little. "I like it here."

Mrs. Barnes nods. "I don't blame you wanting to get away from the West Coast," she says, shaking her head. "Lots of undesirable types."

Tony's smile turns awkward. "I, um. Yeah." He says, and Steve suddenly realizes— _Tony,_ might easily be an Italian immigrant, though he has no trace of an accent. If anything, he's somehow more American than anyone Steve's ever met, and there's no why he's  _fascist,_ even if he is Italian. Not that they were even at war, but you heard things, and as far as Steve's concerned, "fascist" is just a fancy word for "bully".

"What's your last name?" Bucky asks, on the same page as usual, though not as well-informed about Tony's clear non-fascism. Steve kicks him under the table. Bucky gives him a scowl and turns back to Tony, feigning innocence. "If you live around here maybe we know some of your family."

Another flicker of silence, and then Tony says, "Jones." He smiles more naturally, but he's lying. He doubts anyone but he can tell, but Tony's looking directly at him and wants him to badly to believe him, and Steve has no idea what to do with that. "Anthony Jones, named after an old flame of my mom's." He laughs, too-bright. "My dad didn't take well to that, I can tell you."

Mrs. Barnes and Bucky both chuckle, and Steve pastes on a smile over his concern. The relief in Tony's face is palpable. He runs a hand through his hair. "There's not really anyone to know," he says, "even if Jones weren't the most common name in the country. It's just me and my dad." His rueful smile flickers, and that, that's real, that's the same kind of strange, cold grief that Steve saw on the rooftop, and any suspicion Steve might have is overruled by a wave of sympathy. "Was," Tony finishes, quieter. "Just me now."

Mrs. Barnes lowers her head, her expression pitying. "Steve," she says slowly, "why don't you show Tony where the tools are? Bucky and I'll clean up."

Bucky grumbles, but stands to take the plates, and Steve hooks Tony's arm in his and takes him to the closet in the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who commented and wanted more, and I'm sorry about the wait! There will be more chapters as the week goes on.


End file.
